Inspiration and Gratitude

It’s a Tim McGraw Country song. Yes, after meeting Jessica I learned to tolerate (and even like) some Country music. I’m very open minded that way. The lyrics are at the end of this post for those of you who may not have heard it.

I’m here in Florida for a conference. It’s one that was postponed due to it falling on the same weekend that the hurricane hit last month. To be honest, I make it a point to come to this conference every year so that I have a good excuse to visit with my family friends, the Lees. Their son, Lorin was my best friend growing up and they were like a second family to me during my childhood. Lorin died a little over two years ago and that prompted me to rekindle my relationship with his parents. Of course, I’m all “grown up” now, and over this time we have become good friends. [Read more…]

Thanks to the wonderful people at Children’s Hospital who worked and guided us through the process, as well as allowed for it to happen despite the fact that the attic is not done. We are now officially licensed foster parents.

This has been a goal of ours since before moving to Wisconsin and a goal of Jessica’s since before I met her. Without a doubt, our family dynamic is going to be changing but we couldn’t be happier.

Our fundraiser for the homeless woman and her children raised a little over $3,000.00. I was pretty amazed that you all felt compelled to participate in such a big way! It, once again, restores my faith in humanity, recognizing that as individuals we’re pretty awesome. As a group. we can be even more so.

One of my favorite parts of my job is the fact that I belong to several “chat” channels within the WordPress Community. WordPress is such a vibrant, interactive Community that sometimes you forget that it’s a piece of software that runs about 24% of the web. Interacting with this bunch of folks is great because, over time, we’ve gotten to be friends, but we also help each other out in so many ways; the idea being that a rising tide floats all boats. I know for a fact that my interaction with this Community has helped our company grow drastically in the last two years, and I would definitely like to think that our company’s participation within the Community has helped others’ professional, and perhaps personal growth, as well. The goal of our company has always been to improve the quality of life for anyone we come into contact with.

One of the reasons it took us over two years to find a house in Milwaukee was that we wanted to be sure it was in a neighborhood that we liked. We wanted a “Community” atmosphere. It took some time, but we found it.